FEATURESTORY
Love beats bureaucracy An adoption program with Ethiopia that brought joy to Mornington Peninsula families has been abruptly closed by the federal government, SAMANTHA ROBIN reports. t has taken more than a decade of hard work and heartbreak, but Judy Gifford finally has her five ‘‘beautiful girls’’ under the same roof. The McCrae resident and well-known Mornington Peninsula wine maker has dedicated the past 12 years to bringing five Ethiopian sisters to Australia. Despite the many setbacks, hurdles and financial costs, she says the reunion is proof that persistence can pay off. In 2000, Ms Gifford received permission to adopt two sisters from Ethiopia. At the time, Egi and Rediet were aged seven and two. Ms Gifford soon discovered there were three other sisters in Ethiopia who desperately wanted to join their siblings in Australia. ‘‘After 18 months, I took the girls back to Ethiopia for their first visit. We went on a trip around Ethiopia and that was when the girls started to call me mum.’’ Ms Gifford always hoped she would eventually adopt all five sisters and started the adoption process in 2005 for the remaining three girls. But her efforts to reunite the sisters suffered a major setback when the Department of Human Services refused to allow her to adopt the remaining girls as they were aged over nine — the cutoff point for inter-country adoptions in Victoria — and already known to her as the prospective adoptive mother. Refusing to give up, Ms Gifford lobbied politicians and in 2007, Flinders federal MP Greg Hunt took up her cause, asking then Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews to review the decision. Despite the minister recommending she be allowed to apply to adopt the girls, authorities again refused the adoption. ‘‘They said it would be too difficult for the girls to adjust,’’ Ms Gifford says. ‘‘That was one of the worst moments of my life. It was devastating. The worst part was having to tell the girls back in Ethiopia that I wasn’t able to adopt them.’’ In mid-2009, Maurice Blackburn lawyers took on the case pro bono and it ended up at a fourday Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal hearing. “We won,” recalls Ms Gifford. But despite the legal victory, the girls had to relinquished by their birth father in Ethiopia, who wanted a better life for them. Then came another obstacle. During the protracted legal battle, the eldest girl had turned 19, a year over the maximum age that Australia and Ethiopia allow children to be adopted. In September, 2010 the paperwork was finished for the two girls who could be adopted and Ms Gifford was given permission to collect them from Ethiopia. Zen and Selam were 17 and 16 when they came to Australia. “That left the eldest girl, Brtukan, with no way
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Against all odds: From left, Brtukan, Zen, Selam, Egi and Rediet with their adoptive mother Judy Gifford. of being adopted. We tried but couldn’t get a student visa and so we had to start the court process again,’’ Ms Gifford said. After yet another hearing, this time before the Migration Review Tribunal in 2010, a visa was finally authorised in March this year by Immigration Minister Chris Bowen for Brtukan to come to Australia and join her four sisters. She has permanent residency and will eventually be able to apply for citizenship. The girls have settled into the Australian culture well despite having to make major adjustments including learning English. “It is such a big relief to finally have them all together,” Ms Gifford says. “This is my family. They are my beautiful girls.” But for many people on the adoption waiting list, there is no happy ending — on June 28, federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon closed Australia’s adoption program with Ethiopia. While she refused to comment to the Weekly on the issue, Ms Roxon did send a link to a speech she made the day the program was closed. In the speech, Ms Roxon described the adoption environment in Ethiopia as unpredictable, complex and uncertain. “The government has concluded that this uncertainty, combined with obstacles to operating the program in a sustainable and ethical way into the future, means the program needs to be closed,” she said. “The government has also noted that within Ethiopia more and more domestic opportunities are becoming available for children to be adopted or provided long-term care by Ethiopian fam-
Picture: Daryl Gordon
ilies.” Ms Roxon’s speech brought little comfort to the scores of Australians who had spent years waiting for the chance to adopt Ethiopian children. Many have now lost the chance to become parents. People applying for adoption are not
‘Before we had Sophie we were like a jigsaw puzzle that was missing a piece. She was that missing piece that made our jigsaw complete.’ — Phil Helisma allowed to explore other options, such as IVF, while they are on the program. As a result, some parents, who have waited almost a decade to adopt an Ethiopian child, are now considered too old to adopt. Rye couple Phil and Kris Helisma are thankful they were able to adopt their daughter Sophie, 8, before the program closed. They remember vividly the moment they first laid eyes on their little girl at an Ethiopian orphanage in 2004, when she was just seven months old. “We went to the orphanage, Koala House, to collect Sophie and they just brought her in and gave her to us,” Mrs Helisma says. It was a poignant and life-changing moment for the couple. “I am tearing up just thinking about it,” Mr Helisma says. From the first phone call when they found out
they had been allocated a child, to the moment they stepped on the plane returning from Ethiopia with the much-loved little bundle in their arms, they knew their family was finally complete. “Before we had Sophie we were like a jigsaw puzzle that was missing a piece. She was that missing piece that made our jigsaw complete,” Mr Helisma says. The Helismas believe the bureaucracy people face when choosing to adopt makes the process terribly difficult. “I think the Australian government has just put Ethiopian adoption in the too-hard basket,” Mrs Helisma says. “One of the most upsetting things for people who have been waiting is that they have been given no real explanation of why the program has been closed.” Greg Hunt said upset local families had contacted him to complain that the Ethiopian adoption program had been closed with no notice. ‘‘These families are devastated. This was the last option for many families. They had spent years of preparation in Australia ensuring everything was in order and now they feel like it has just been snatched from under them.’’ UNICEF estimates there are 3.8 million children in Ethiopia who are orphaned or live in households where there are no parents. Since adopting Sophie, the Helismas have had many trips back to Ethiopia. Mrs Helisma said seeing the orphanages there underlined the importance of the adoption program. “These children need a family.’’
October 31, 2012 WEEKLY – YOUR COMMUNITY VOICE
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